


A Better Bargain

by Destina



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-01
Updated: 2007-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years ago, Sam and Dean made a deal, and now Sam holds Dean to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better Bargain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mamadeb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamadeb/gifts).



> Written in August 2007, posted to AO3 in October 2015. For the prompts: apple, needle, eyeglasses.

Sam didn't like to call it a deal, or a pact, or any other word that made him feel like he'd taken Dean's choices away. He called it a promise, and once in a while he wielded the word like a weapon, because it was the only way to make sure Dean lived up to his end of the bargain. 

Ten years, now, since the day of that promise, and the terms were coming due. 

They didn't actually pick their last hunt. It just came up; Paul called with the job for them, were-dogs and wendigos and all manner of creatures penned together in a kind of twisted menagerie, and by the time they'd made it to Oroville, Oregon, the things had somehow managed to get loose. 

Three days - days spent crouched behind bushes, taking the damn things out one by one until they were covered in guts and gore and sweat and leaves. Killing, burning, scattering, until the woods smelled of bonfire and gunpowder, until Sam was too tired to see straight and the only thing he could feel was Dean by his side, at his back; they were years past the need to actually speak on hunts, but Dean called his name once, Sammy!, and Sam felt the weight of the world lift from him at the triumph in Dean's voice. 

It was good to end their hunting days on a win. 

They drove back to North Dakota, straight through with stops to piss and buy coffee and gas. Dean was bleeding intermittently from three gashes on his back, but he'd had worse. Sam was singed around the ears and gave off the stink of burned hair. None of it could shake the strange dual feeling of quiet contentment and apprehension sinking deep into Sam's belly. He didn't say it out loud, but he could feel the tension quivering off Dean, too, that same vibe of loss and gain. 

Light snow dusted the ground when they pulled into their driveway. Sam got out of the car and stood looking at the house - their house - for a long moment. Hundreds of times they'd pulled up to the door of some random motel and left everything in the car, just staggered inside and toward the bed, falling face-down into dreamless sleep. It was strange to be returning to the same place they'd left; it was all still pretty new. Sam couldn't quite think of it as coming home. Not yet. Not with home standing on the other side of the car, waiting for him. 

He turned and met Dean's eyes, and Dean moved to the back, unlocked the trunk. They shouldered bags, tossed loose items into boxes, quick, efficient, years of three-minute packing and loading under their belts. Two trips, and a lumpy pile of essential items grew in the front hallway, lopsided and strangely out of place. The empty cavern of the Impala's trunk gaped at them, like someone had removed her heart. Dean closed the lid gently; he drew one hand across the metal in a lingering caress as he followed Sam inside. 

The house was cold as a meat locker. Sam cranked up the heat and pointed to the coffee table. "Sit," he told Dean. "Don't get blood on the couch." 

"Yes, mother," Dean muttered, but he shed his shirt and boots and stood there shivering over the vent in his stocking feet and jeans, waiting for warm air to bring down the goosebumps. 

Sam rooted around in the pile of equipment in the hall until he came up with the suture kit. When he got back to the living room, Dean had the bowl of Halloween candy in his hand. He shifted the two apples out of the way and dug straight down to the chocolate. Sam watched him for a long moment, thinking of trick-or-treating with his brother in the chill fall air when he was five, and how Dean had scoffed at apples. "Razor blades in 'em, don't trust 'em" he'd told Sam, though Sam had known even then it was less about potential danger and more about relative sugar content. 

Sam loved the constancy that made Dean who he was. And he loved that when Dean had stuffed two miniature Hershey's bars in his mouth, he polished an apple on the knee of his filthy jeans and took a huge bite. 

Armed with needle, silk, soap, water, and towels, Sam sat down on the couch, Dean in front of him on the coffee table. Dean glanced over his shoulder. "How's the patient, nurse?"

"Ugly. But you'll live." 

Dean smirked at him and took a deep breath, readying himself. It would be minor pain, but there had been so much pain for Dean over the years; the cumulative toll was high. Even so, Sam made it a quick job: scrub away the blood, give the gashes five stitches apiece, and Dean was good as new. Sam took the opportunity to run his hands over Dean's skin, reading the story told by his scars, an entire history of their lives, together, separate, every raised white line a life saved, a battle lost, a memory. Dean's head dropped low and he held very still, submitting to Sam's touch in a way that had been hard for him, ten years before. 

So much had changed, and yet so much was exactly the same. 

"All done," Sam said, though he'd been done for a good five minutes. He wiped the needles clean and placed them back in the suture kit. 

Dean stood up, flexing his shoulders experimentally, and nodded. "Nice work, Sammy. Can barely feel it." 

"My stitches always were better than yours." It was true, too. Mostly because he'd had a hell of a lot more practice on Dean than the other way around. 

"Show-off." Dean grabbed the towels and basin and made off with them. Sam slowly closed the suture kit and set it on the table.

The trunk was stowed in the hall closet, so it would be handy when the time came. Sam flipped on the hall lights and tugged the thing out into the open. It would take both of them to lift it, once it was full. 

"You sure about this?" Dean stood in the doorway, rolling up the sleeves of a gray Henley. Sam looked up at him, whole and alive ten years down the road from the day Sam saved his ass from hell, and his answer was immediate.

"Yes." You promised, he thought for the thousandth time, willing Dean into compliance, but he didn't say it. Dean seemed to hear it anyway, because he nodded and crouched down on the floor beside Sam, his forty-year-old knees popping in the process. Sam grinned; Dean punched him in the shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. 

They sat there for a moment, silent. Then Dean said, "I don't know if I'm cut out for the daily grind, Sammy."

"Please," Sam said. "Only you could go from being one of America's most wanted to being a local sheriff." 

"True," Dean said. His lips quirked in a tiny grin. "That was a pretty good trick." 

"Have they never heard of background checks here in the boonies?" 

"Hey, my background is impeccable."

"Dean Sauer's background is impeccable." 

Dean shrugged. "You're going to work as a fake research librarian, dude. I don't want to hear it." 

"You like librarians," Sam said, leaning in close enough to smell the heat on Dean's skin. "You think they're hot."

"Some of them," Dean answered, his eyes shifting toward Sam, sly, and then away again. 

Sam nodded, head turned away to hide his smile. It was all for show, this banter. Like everything else since that day in the road, the day Sam had tricked a demon into releasing his brother, the day everything changed. 

He remembered the moment it had all become so clear to him: Dean on his knees, panic on his face and Sam on his back in the dirt, momentarily unsure if he'd just died or if he'd managed to pull off the greatest cheat in the history of demon-hunting. Then Dean had pulled him up off the ground, and they were kissing, deep, slow kisses, with Dean's hands fisted in his shirt and Sam's shoved under Dean's, every door unlocked and nothing held back. 

He'd known, then. Known he could never leave. Known he had to make it seem like Dean was doing him a favor by agreeing to settle down. Known he had to put a time limit on the hunting thing, a clock to ensure their time didn't run out. They'd had their second chances, and their third and their fifth, maybe even their tenth and twentieth, and no hunter's luck could hold out forever. 

"Ten years," he'd said, after they'd touched every inch of each other, trashed their motel room, and were curled together on the half-unmade bed. "Ten years of hunting, and then we're done. We get a place. We get off the road."

"You think we'll last that long?" Dean had snorted in his ear, though the fingertips buried in Sam's hair were gentle. "If the feds don't get us, we might give out before then. Or get wiped out." 

"The feds won't get us," Sam had told him, very sure. "Do it for me, Dean. Promise me."

A normal life. A home. He wasn't sure either of them knew how, after so many years on the road, on the run. But he knew Dean wanted it still, could tell the craving was there, settled down deep in his bones and blood, and Sam could make sure he had it. 

Together, they packed the trunk with the essentials. The books stayed out; Sam expected to need them for research. Already they had calls from other hunters, some of the young ones especially. It made him smile to think of being Bobby to their Sams and Deans. Bobby would have laughed. 

Knives went in the bottom, carefully sheathed and wrapped to protect against dulling and tarnish. A layer of herbs and charms went in between. Electronics came next, EMF meters and digital recorders, cameras and other tricks of the trade. 

Dean set the salt aside. Even now, he wasn't satisfied unless salt and sigils protected their doorways. Sam let it go. He understood those jitters all too well. 

First night on the road to Oregon, Dean had cleaned every gun. He set two aside, the shotgun and the .45, and Sam added the 9mm with special grips to the group they were saving out. They set the rest into the trunk, nestled securely in foam to wait for a time someone might need them again. 

They still had an inch or so left to fill by the time they reached the top. Dean reached over and set Dad's journal in the center. Sam drew two fingers along the worn leather. Neither of them had cracked open the journal in years. For one thing, they had it memorized. For another, Dean wouldn't admit it, but he was having a damned hard time reading anything without glasses. It made Sam laugh into his sleeve on a regular basis. 

Sam tripped the latch on Dad's journal and opened it to a random page. Dad's chunky block printing jumped out at him, a reminder of all the things they'd lost, all the years they hadn't had together. 

"Don't." Dean reached in and closed the journal. 

"Where's the..."

"Right here." Since their father died, Sam had been keeping a journal for the two of them; Dean was holding it in his hand. He set it alongside their father's. It looked slim by comparison. 

"That it?" Dean asked. 

Sam nodded. In tandem, they pulled the lid down, snapped the latches in place. Each took hold of one handle to lift it; Dean winced when the stitches pulled on his back. 

The trunk fit into the back of the closet just so. They stood staring at it, then exchanged a glance. 

"You never know," Dean began, and Sam nodded; he was already moving, and Dean right beside him, as they pulled the trunk closer to the front. 

Just in case.


End file.
